the reasons for delivery: related fear and associated factors in western turkey

ba ck g r oun d  & aim: childbirth related fear (crf) causes pregnant women  to select cesarean section (cs) without a medical reason. the purpose of this study was to determine reasons for delivery related fear and associated factors in pregnant women. methods & materials: a descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted on 315 pregnant wom- en who were in the last trimester. participants were randomly recruited from an outpatient clinic of a state hospital in çanakkale, turkey, between march and may 2012. data were collected using a socio-demographic  information  form and crf  information  questionnaire.  descriptive  statistics and chi-square test were performed to identify the frequency of delivery related fear and associat- ed factors. data were analyzed with mean, standard deviation, frequency, and chi-square test using spss version 16. r es u l t s : the mean age of the pregnant women was 26.67 ± 5.62 years and the mean gestational week of the women was 34.02 ± 4.22. of 315 women, 53.7% had cs, 30.8% had vaginal birth, 34% had prenatal education, 69.8% had knowledge about birth, 66% were influenced by prenataleducation positively, 62.5% had delivery-related  fear, and 27% of them stated that this fear was related to loss of their babies. about 40% of the women talked to their mothers about childbirth and 70.2% of these women were affected positively by these conversations, 24.1% of the women heard about bad birth experiences,  and 69.7% of the women were affected negatively by these experiences. there was a significant relationship between delivery related fear and age, education, income,  the  number  of  pregnancies,  problems  in  pregnancy,  planning  of  pregnancy,  prenatal health monitoring visits, getting information related to birth, being influenced by this information, talking about birth with people, and hearing about bad birth experiences (p < 0.050). con cl u s i o n : based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that pregnant women need to get appropriate information from health professionals to deal with crf.